. >> a lot of talk about this is a carter-reagan election or whether mitt romney is a doyle character in history, any thoughts on, you know, what we can learn from those elections, and what we are in right now? >> by the time we got to the critical, single debate between president carter and governor reagan in 1980 the polls were tight, carter was ahead, reagan had been ahead after his convention in july. there was -- i'm not sure how clear a sense there was, there was some sense in the country that the nation was ready to make a change and wanted to make a change and people were apprehensive about this man reagan, the former actor, the one-time governor of california. they weren't too sure about him and his performance in the debate was very reassuring and the polls turned off that and he won going away. four years later reagan was way ahead and he clearly lost the first debate to walter mondale. i was covering mondale. i remember it. there was a sense of momentum about it that occurred and you thought that mondale might get some purchase in the race. i don't think he ever was going